Thrill Seeker (18 page)

When I woke, I remembered I was trapped. I was alone too, lying on the low, makeshift bed in the theatre’s chairless stalls, my wrists and ankles loosely bound. Where was he? Earlier, he’d sat in the red-draped armchair in the strange half-room he’d built, ignoring me by ostentatiously reading a book in the emptiness. I’d lain on the mattress, trussed in a hog-tie, my body bending back like a bow to meet the bundled connection of my wrists and ankles. My mouth had been fixed open with a claw gag. I was there purely for him, Den told me. I was a body whose greedy holes he could avail himself of at any given moment. The claw gag, a pair of two-pronged hooks on a strap around my head, pulled on the insides of my cheeks, making it impossible for me to swallow.

The loss of dignity and agency was darkly, deliciously
liberating. The bondage and the claw gag which, let’s face it, wasn’t a pretty object, allowed me to cast off my respectable, social veneer. In submission and humiliation, I could put inhibition aside and revel in my enjoyment of gloriously filthy sex with this man whose imagination could spin scenarios I hadn’t yet dreamed of.

Den had fucked my mouth while I was gagged but he hadn’t climaxed. I think the point was to prove he could treat me like his sex slave. I’d loved being made to take it but then he’d re-tied the ropes, removed the gag and told me to get some rest. Somehow, I’d slept. On waking I had no clue of the time or whether Den was still here. He would be, I told myself. You don’t leave a woman in an empty building, tied up from kinky sex-games. Was he watching me from a hidden vantage point, trying to see something new in me by catching me off guard as he claimed he liked to do?

I kept still, not wanting to be a monkey in his cage. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with our game. Though the sex thrilled me, an emotional coldness was setting in which I didn’t much care for. I wanted the comfort of aftercare but Den was less than generous with himself. Through Baxter I’d learned the importance of aftercare, of checking your submissive partner is OK, then giving them what they need to come back to themselves and relocate. Sometimes I needed space and the knowledge Baxter was beside me, waiting. Sometimes, I needed to be held against his strong chest, enveloped in gentle arms, rocked and hushed.
There, there, it’s all OK, the nasty brute has gone.

Den kept checking I was physically OK but emotionally, he kept me at a distance. Perhaps I’d brought that on myself by unmasking him the first time he’d offered kindness and comfort. Had I made him wary, reluctant to step out of
character in case I used his vulnerability against him? Or maybe this apparent performance
was
his character. Or at least, the cruel, aloof role was the only side he would show to me in here. He’d seemed easy-going and nice enough in our emails. Was his humanity an act he couldn’t sustain? Or did he refuse to access his sensitivity and decency once engaged in a D/S relationship?

My mind began to drift, revisiting all that had happened since our arrival in the theatre. I tried to organise the pleasure into a coherent narrative but my memories were too tangled, individual events inseparable from a general excess of flesh, sensation and climaxes, of gloomy corridors and the desolate, palatial beauty of the half-lit auditorium that held us. Because, yes, that’s how it felt: as if Den and I were held here. Like theatre-goers, we’d been transported to an unreal world and now we were captives in that magical space, transfixed and unable to flee.

I flexed my shoulders and stretched my neck. The chandelier and dome of the ornate ceiling loomed over me, an unchanging sky, home to roosting pigeons and no other birds. I wondered how long Den been planning this. I was seriously impressed by the effort. When we returned to our ordinary selves, I would ask how he’d managed it, ask to see the smoke and mirrors.

And that’s when I remembered Rory, the thought springing from nowhere. I hadn’t left any food out for her, poor puss. She’d be starving by now, wandering round the house, whining and clawing at the carpet. Jeez, Nats, how could you?

Guilt and self-loathing swamped me, the intensity of the feelings disproportionate to the consequences of my momentary, unintentional neglect. In a panic, I processed
the implications of an empty bowl. If we were going to stay overnight, that would mean at least twenty four hours without food. She had water and a probably a few biscuits lingering from the morning but even so. What time was it now? My heart twisted to think of Rory hungry and distressed, no one coming to her aid.

I was ashamed to acknowledge how easily I’d forgotten her in my excitement of leaving the house for my assignation. I’d never seen myself as one of those women who’s quick to sacrifice her lifestyle and priorities as soon as some cute guy with a big dick lands on her doorstep. That wasn’t me. My sense of self was stronger than that. I liked to believe I didn’t bend and sway to male attention; I didn’t go off the rails when lust got the better of me. But lying there, tied up and horny in an abandoned theatre with my cat’s needs all but forgotten, I glimpsed an image of an idiotic, man-obsessed woman who looked remarkably like me. Oh, Aurora, I’m sorry!

Something else bothered me too, a profound discomfort that didn’t fully make sense. Was that part of the comedown I seemed to be experiencing or was something else troubling me, something I couldn’t identify? But no, come on, Nats. The key issue was not self-analysis but how to rectify the situation. Was it too late to call Liam and ask him to pop round and feed her? But what would I say? I still hadn’t revealed anything to him about Den or what I was up to. If I had a better sense of the time, I could maybe work out what to do.

I heaved myself into a sitting position, awkward in ropes. ‘Den!’ I called out. ‘Den, where are you?’ A faint echo blurred my words.

‘Here.’

I turned to where Den was crouched on his haunches
by the orchestra pit, bare-chested and apparently examining the ornate barrier of the pit. He stood, tugging free a piece of wood, then cast it to the ground after a cursory inspection.

‘You OK?’ he called.

‘No!’

He strode towards me through the pearlised half-light. He was naked from the waist up, the wedge of his torso sloping to narrow hips. He seemed mythic, like an unearthly creature of the gloaming. His skin gleamed with a silvery film and my restless gaze skated over his body, taking in the black-ink tattoo, the dustings of dark hair and his chiselled physique. I felt weak to think of what the heft in those muscles had done to me.

‘What is it?’

‘I want to go home.’ I said the words before I’d consciously thought them. Immediately, I realised how desperately true they were. I wanted to click my heels three times and be whisked away. I wanted to hop into the funicular as I did after running on the seafront. I wanted home and Rory and comfort. ‘I forgot to feed my cat,’ I said.

Den stood by the mattress and gazed down at me, half-puzzled, those blue, almond-shaped eyes striving to read my face. Maybe my reason sounded lame, but it was partly true and the best I could come up with at the time. It was too late for us to use my usual dating opt-out: I don’t think we’re compatible. Besides, I wasn’t sure that was accurate. I needed to take stock and reflect on what Den and I were doing. With hindsight, I could see we’d been hugely ambitious in planning this kidnap game for our first meet up. Maybe we needed to slow things down a fraction and discuss what we both wanted from this sort of relationship.

‘Your cat?’ he said disparagingly.

‘Yes,’ I replied, my tone defensive. ‘My cat.’

Den shrugged as if he didn’t believe me or didn’t care. He knelt on the mattress and everything in his manner seemed to say ‘whatever’. The scent of his sweat tormented me, and I had to resist the urge to lean closer for more of him.

He began fiddling with my bondage, the rope whistling coldly against itself as he unthreaded. He eased the tangles from me, working in silence. Concerned I might be sabotaging our prospects, I tried again with a better explanation and more gratitude.

‘Today’s been wonderful,’ I said. ‘You organised everything so perfectly. Really, it’s been great, thank you. But I have to confess, this place does weird me out.’

‘That was part of the plan.’ Den looked up from the snarled rope he was working on. ‘But if you don’t want to go through with it, that’s acceptable. We’ll wrap things up here.’

I wanted him to sound more disappointed. ‘I just wasn’t organised for this,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think I’d be out all night. I have other commitments, stuff to do tomorrow as well. And I should have thought about the cat. Stupid of me to forget to leave food out. Embarrassing, really. But I’ve had a brilliant time. Seriously, it’s been wild. And again, thanks for setting this up. So impressive. No idea how you did it. I can’t wait for the next time. I think we’ve only just scratched the surface here. We’ve got so much more to explore.’

Den shook his head, pinning me with those serious blue eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We haven’t. When we leave here, it’s over between us.’

I felt my face pale with shock. ‘Are you roleplaying?’

Den straightened out the last tangle in the rope and stood briskly. ‘No. This is all I wanted. One chance, one meeting.’
He shook the rope, matched the ends together and ran the smooth lengths through one fist.

I stared at him, struggling to absorb his meaning. ‘But what about me? What about what I want?’

Den made a loop with the rope then began weaving it into a fat chain, preparing it for storage, for next time. ‘I told you once,’ he said, casting me a casual glance. ‘I warned you. Don’t you remember? I made it quite clear from the start.’ He gave me a direct look. ‘I don’t give a single fuck what you want.’

On the day that would have been my father’s sixtieth birthday, Baxter turned up at my house with a black and white cat in a lilac cat-carrier.

‘I thought it might help with any sadness,’ he said.

Behind the grille was a beautiful, green-eyed creature with fluffy white boots and a face that looked as if it had been dipped in a pot of white paint. She was, explained Baxter, the pet of a work colleague and needed re-homing. Her owners were due to have a baby and feared the cat-baby combo might prove problematic.

When this tiny panda-like creature tiptoed out of her carrier and nuzzled against my ankle, all practical concerns as to the wisdom of me being a cat owner vanished.

‘She’s called Minx,’ said Baxter, smiling proudly.

‘Minx?’ I said softly, not wanting to startle her. ‘You
are
joking, aren’t you?’

‘Fraid not. Why, you got a problem with standing at your door shouting “Minx”?’

‘Yes,’ I said, laughing. ‘But you know, ugh. Too cute and girlish. All kinds of wrong.’

‘Well, I doubt she knows she’s called Minx.’ Baxter stroked
the cat, his hand enormous against her slender, bony body. ‘Wee thing’s only a year old. Aren’t you, eh?’

And so Minx became Aurora in honour of my father and the dreams he never had time to claim, especially his dream to see the Northern Lights. Over time, Aurora got shortened to Rory but in her green eyes I still saw my reminder of the need to live life to its full potential, and to not neglect dreams, desires and important aspects of myself.

When Den dropped me back home, I began to suspect that’s why I’d wanted to leave the theatre so suddenly. I needed to feed Rory but I also wanted to return to what she represented in my subconscious. I’d had an urgent longing to get back to me, my priorities, and the space where love and kindness had once been. At the time, I hadn’t been able to put my finger on the impulse, but it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have tried explaining that to Den anyway.

I overfed Rory then curled up in bed, sore, aching and confused. Did Den really not give a fuck? Had he viewed this as a one-off encounter from the start or had he decided he didn’t want to pursue a sexual relationship with me because I’d turned out to be a disappointment? One chance, one meeting. Did I fail the chance? Was I not up to scratch as a lover? Was I doing something wrong? Was it obvious I wasn’t hugely experienced when it came to kinky sex? But I’d never professed to be an expert so why should that matter?

We’d had little opportunity to talk on the way home. Den had insisted on blindfolding me before leading me to the van where, again, I’d had to clamber blindly into the back and endure the journey from the discomfort of the mattress. His justification was he didn’t want me to know where we’d just passed the last several hours. He’d spent a long time setting up our roleplay. He’d taken risks. He didn’t want to chance
me running to the police and accusing him of breaking and entering

‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘That’s a ridiculous notion.’

‘So do me the courtesy of respecting my request.’

I’d gone along with wearing the blindfold primarily because I was eager to get home and didn’t want to waste time negotiating how we could achieve that. As soon as he’d slid the van door shut I removed the eyemask, but I was in pitch darkness, no windows to see out of. We were home in about ten minutes. It had felt much longer the first time. I wished I had a better knowledge of Saltbourne’s abandoned buildings but there were so many of them, boarded up and derelict, that they didn’t register as individual structures, just part of our broken townscape.

Den had stopped at the bottom of my narrow road and slid open the van door. He made no comment on my lack of blindfold. There was no need to keep me sightless any more, and the D/S dynamic we’d been playing with was evidently in the past. He wasn’t going to chastise me for disobeying him as he might have done in a different situation. We were in our civvies, back to normal. Game over.

‘So you’re really saying that’s it?’ I asked. It was around two in the morning and the streets were dark and quiet, the moon a high crescent behind thin, smoky clouds.

Den handed me my bag. ‘Let’s give it a few days, see how we feel.’ He bent forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. ‘Go and feed your cat. It’s late.’

I turned on my heels, feeling patronised and messed about. Nonetheless, I was glad he seemed to have had a change of heart about quitting.